Sunday, 29 January 2017

The ability to work bronze changed our world 3,000 years ago. It took an edge and held it, finer and sharper than flint that chipped or chert that cracked. Bronze offered a new blade, a different weight, a certain shining glamour. Working bronze set us on a path that led to iron and eventually, well, us!

As part of the Collections in the Landscape Project, Buxton Museum has been working with ancient technology specialist James Dilley to review Stone and Bronze Age collections. James has done various public events with the museum but now we are offering an intensive day exploring those Bronze Age technologies. Under James’ expert guidance, participants will work with moulds, a charcoal furnace, bronze and copper and bellows to make their own bronze artefact to take home

tools, materials and protective equipment will be provided

this is a 1 day workshop repeated on the Sunday

participants must be 16 years of age or older

£50 per person includes lunch - advanced booking is essential

to book: call the museum on 01629 533540 during office hours

directions and further details sent nearer the time

Another March event:Exploring Ancient Landscapes: a walk through timeSaturday 25th March 2017(this event was published in the blog "Walking through time")

Have you ever wondered what the grassy lumps in the field are, why the field hedge is where it is or what that old building was used for? Archaeologist and heritage interpreter Bill Bevan will help you identify and understand the clues from our past that survive in the landscape. The Hope Valley between Castleton and Hope is an excellent place to find these remains of the past. The day will begin by looking at historic maps before walking and talking in the landscape itself on a circular walk between the two villages.

Saturday, 28 January 2017

Have you ever wondered what the grassy lumps in the field are, why the field hedge is where it is or what that old building was used for? From ancient beginnings, Castleton in the Hope Valley has grown and changed. Those changes can still be traced in the patterns of fields and footpaths, in long views of landscapesand the routes of paths and roads

Archaeologist and heritage interpreter Bill Bevan will help you identify and understand the clues from our past that survive in the landscape. The Hope Valley between Castleton and Hope is an excellent place to trace these changing fortunes of a village. The day will begin by looking at historic maps before walking and talking in the landscape itself on a circular walk between the two villages.

still changing: Castleton in 1951

“Exploring Ancient Landscapes” is one of a series of Knowledge Seeker workshops being organised as part of Buxton Museum and Art Gallery’s Collections in the Landscape (CITL) project. With a grant from the Heritage Lottery, the Museum is changing the way people can access the Collections. As well as physical changes to the Museum itself, collections are going on-line and a series of apps will encourage people to connect places with Museum treasures even when they are out walking in the Peaks

With stories spinning from the first signs of spring right through
to earth giants, summer flowers and thunder-tigers, here are stories and
activities to enchant and inspire.

Drawing on 30 years of professional
experience, Gordon’s work blends environmental experience with creativity. “Much
of my work uses storytelling and story making but I also make small masks,
giant masks, flags, lanterns, pop-up landscapes and create wild and wonderful
occasions”

Scottish tours:

This year, I will be up in northern Scotland:

8 – 19th
May 2017 SOLD OUT!

4 – 15th
September 2017For other possible dates, drop me an email. For dates in England and wales, just get in touch and we'll see what we can do! Only Irish dates at the moment are late April and the Environmental Education Ireland gathering then

A day’s visit to your school might include:

storytelling
performances: lasting up to 60 minutes for up to 90 children
at a time

stories
out of anything! outdoors or
in, we'll use leaves and pine cones, twigs and stones and shells to inspire words, create poems and
shape a set of stories never told before

(allow 60
minutes for a class session)

New workshop!

puppets and headfuls of animals: like the illustration, we can make quick finger puppet animals or
magnificent animal crowns. Allow an hour and a half for a class

New workshop!

Heroes for stories: building characters - as quick puppets and as written pieces:
capturing the qualities of our characters for stories: their ambitions,
triumphs, disasters and secrets - skills for a richer tale

Stone Age Days: with
stories to set the scene, we’ll look at the worlds of our ancestors with flint
tools, bone needles, wooden bowls, fur and feathers.Usually half a day for a class. Ask
for more details

story and book workshops: taking a bit longer (allow 90 minutes for a class) as well as
discovering those stories no-one has ever heard before, now we will build those
into the books that no-one has ever read before and leave the classroom with a
library no-one has ever visited before!

pop-up storyscapes: allow an hour for a class: gathering ideas, images and words we’ll make quick 3-d
landscapes holding the essence of a story in a setting, key characters and the
words that set the adventure running

tales of old Scotland: a collection of stories of Highland folklore and Scottish
histories, of heroes and sorrows, bravery and the magics of sea, mountain and
moor. These can be steered in various directions and we might listen to stories
from Viking days or medieval and Stuart stories and even add some Scottish
explorers and their adventures and disasters…

your own themes and ideas: or are you exploring a particular
theme that you would like to involve some stories in?In recent projects
we have also made talking stone puppets, a giant eagle to hang from a classroom
ceiling, prehistoric rockpools, a swarm of shadow dragons, pop-up castles

Charges:
£250 a day: includes storyteller’s fee, travel and
materials. Can be paid on the day or I can invoice you.

Wednesday, 18 January 2017

When I start a project like this, it usually begins in a
babble of words. It often doesn’t matter what direction I am meant to be going in, my self just fills
up with any old thing. Bits, phrases, odd rhymes, sudden weathers of feelings,
images to try to gather into words. It’s interesting and rewarding and exciting
as it starts to give me unexpected shapes. A commission might be asking for “a
story about a tree” and my sensible head goes sensibly off on a path through
the woods, skipping slightly, perhaps swinging Little Red’s basket while
wearing Dorothy’s shiny red shoes. But the rest of me will have sidetracked
completely and be sitting under the trollbridge sharing marshmallows* with a troll family and knitting socks for sheep. And
that random departure is almost always the response that gives the best results

anything can set the fires of ideas

Beeston Tor

So now I’m in the random stage. My note book is filling with
conversations with ravens about the warmth of Liff’s Low. I’m watching clouds
turn over the emptiness of Fin Cop. A whole tribe of Boggarts arrived in the
margin of notes about caves and stalactites. And St Bertram is simply being
irritating.

“Collection of the Artists” is another project under the
encompassing umbrella of Buxton Museum and Art Gallery’s Collection in theLandscapes project. While the wider project is supporting the redesign of the
Wonders of the Peaks gallery, the digitising of the collection and my own work
with events – taking the collection into the landscape, CotA is probably
quieter. There are 6 of us, working with an Arts Council England grant to
explore and respond to the dynamic of the Museum’s collection and the landscape
it was largely drawn from as artists.

The team include

Potter: Caroline Chouler

Richard and Amanda from Kidology, bringing visual art and
music to the work

Textile artist Seiko Kineshito

And metalworker Simon Watson will be shaping ideas into bronze

O, and me: storyteller and poet

(more links will follow!)

Richard and Amanda are CITL long term artists-in-residence
and are already producing work related to the collection

we have already done events on curiosities

Over the next few weeks, ideas will develop: together and as
individual artists and as things evolve, I’ll post them here – at least from my
work

It’s exciting stuff. I know what I think may come out of
this, but who knows…

1. O, Bertram,

Christian hero,

Or abandoned Pagan saint,

I will give you

The apple in my bag,

The chocolate in my pocket,

A poem from my wordstore,

If you will bring me safe
from this place.

Up here.

It goes up here.

There’s a rope to hold onto.

Try coming down backwards.

It’s easier backwards.

You do need to let go

And then there is St B

Don’t misunderstand me, I like the chap – bit of a fool,
maybe. He did, after all, leave his new wife in labour in a wolf-wood to go off
hoping to find a helpful midwife? He really couldn’t have helped himself? Of
course not. Then we wouldn’t have had the tragedy, the despair, the
renunciation of worldly things, life in a cave, death, sanctification,
pilgrims, hidden bones and a shrine that is one of the very few left in an
Anglican Church in England. Or so I am told…..There are other St B’s but ours
lived (eventually) at Beeston Tor and then his bones were enshrined at the
little church at Ilam and that is his only shrine, anywhere. Other St Bertrams
are apparently not him. He does have a statue at St Bartholomew’s in Longnor
just a few miles up the dale.

Find out more? St B turns up in lots of books, but you could try Sacred Britain by Martin Palmer and Nigel Palmer (Piatkus, 1997, p149)
Walk more? Why not consider following the new pilgrimage route from Ilam to Eyam?

2. Here?

Is this where your pilgrims
came?

Did they hold a rope too?

Was this path easier then?

A thousand years less
stone-cracking ice?

Hand over hand,

Take it slowly.

A long reach over nothing for a wary
foot.

The river waits.

Don’t think,

Just reach.

It’s easier backwards.

You do need to let go

It all gets a bit confusing and he’s not really within my
remit for CotA but this comes back to that random excitement. So, as ideas
develop, so will something inspired by St Bertram and a wonderfully craggy cliff
where people lived, worshipped, died and hid their treasures for thousands of
years….

3. Pause here,

A tormentil lawn in morning
warmth,

Warm enough to wake the ants
who live in the stone,

Rest and be still and listen,

To the whispers

On the wind, in the stone,
out of the shadows

He don’t heal.

He don’t cure.

He blesses babies.

Babbies is important since ‘e loss ‘is.

‘E telt me not to be so addlepated, such a fool ‘e
call’d me.

Ah.

There!

Down there,

Not up here.

Down there,

A stroll down the lane,

An easy wade through cold
water,

A splashing ford,

That side of
the hill, not

This side of
the tor,

Hand over hand,

It’s easier backwards.

O, Bertram,

I gave

The apple in my bag to the
birds,

The chocolate in my pocket to
my friends,

And a poem from my wordstore,

I whisper to the voices in
the darkness of the caves

we should have crossed the river

(we still haven’t got to
Bertram’s cave)

(*
marshmallows? O, that is another story and watch for the book due out sometime
this year for that one) Thanks to Sarah and Ronson for being photographed....the slightly agitated lines in the poem, however, are all mine!

Friday, 13 January 2017

I’ve been quiet for a few weeks on this blog as work, life
and the festive season caught up with me. New entries are brewing, however, and
will follow shortly

But this week winter has really hit here in the hills and
after an eventful drive home last night, I have had a day of meetings at home
while stepping out into a bright winter day with the hills white, roads closed
and that sense of precious, dramatic stillness that comes with snow. It will
probably not last – the roads are clear again, and footpaths are thawing – but for
this day it has been glorious

And reminds me of a poem I wrote a few years ago now and the
sense of impending witner and the stillness it can bring